He began his career with The Wall Street Journal in the 1950s, covering business and social issues, including the early years of the Civil Rights Movement.
In the last of his 29 appearances on the Charlie Rose talk show, he said that the most satisfying time of his career was when he was reporting on the American civil rights movement.
In 1963, Apple joined The New York Times, where he worked for over 30 years, contributing foreign correspondence from over 100 countries, including coverage of the Vietnam War – where his penetrating questioning helped expose the unreliability of the military briefings known as the Five O'Clock Follies – the Biafra crisis, the Iranian revolution, and the fall of Communist governments in the Soviet bloc.
[2] Nearly 40 years later, it was revealed that one of the main sources for that influential story was Lt. Gen. Frederick Weyand, commander of U.S. forces in III Corps, the area around Saigon.
In 1966, he was nearly killed by friendly fire while covering a firefight at a village when a machine-gun bullet ripped through the back of his trousers and split his belt in half.
Beyond The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, Apple was published in many prominent magazines, including The Atlantic, Esquire, GQ, and Gourmet.
They maintained residences at 1509 28th Street, Northwest, Washington, D.C. in the Georgetown neighborhood;[5] on a farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; and in the Cotswold region of England.
I soon learned a trick to find his recommendations without pestering him: I would search Nexis using three elements: his byline, the name of a city and the phrase "my wife, Betsey.